"Death Sentences in France under Napoleon: Three Times" Topic

…. FEWER THAN IN ENGLAND AND WALES

"Every month, the "Bullet Point" will confront a question related to the First Empire. My remarks are designed to form the basis for debate and, I hope, research. This month, I am asking myself the question whether, as some still say, Napoleon's France was "the France of the guillotine".

Napoleon's "France of the guillotine" is one the "great myths" of the First Empire, widespread in both French- and English-language historiography. For some, the period was characterised by summary executions, left, right and centre, all in the name of "Napoleon's dictatorship". How credible is this?

A little clarification, first of all, for those who think that France was not subject to the rule of law: it was tribunals composed of tenured judges who passed penal judgements, and crimes were debated before popular juries. Before the Code of penal procedure came into force in 1810 (the Code Pénal of 1810), there were even two juries: one for the accusation and another for the judgement. Only a magistrate, called a "magistrat de sûreté", could decide on the incarceration of the suspect during an inquiry, a procedure which was led by another magistrate called "Directeur du jury d'accusation". Once the different audiences and legal acts had taken place, this "Directeur" would then advise the "jury d'accusation" as to the subsequent steps to follow. If this figure chose to send the accused to face the tribunal, he ceded his place before the "jury de jugement" and the trial proper…."
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Amicalement
Armand

Interesting, but flawed.

Where the author is going wrong is assuming that a death sentence = an execution. That certainly wasn't the case in Britain, where the commutation rate was extremely high – of the order of 85-90%.

For the years he gives the figures for (1813-1816), the actual number of executions in Britain was a little over 300, not 2800. In fact, 2800 is significantly more than the total number of executions for the whole first quarter of the 19th century.

The article also assumes that the reader will have confounded Napoleonic France with the Terror of the Revolution. Anybody who is that historically ignorant will not be looking for enlightenment at napoleon.org.

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Checked the Edinburgh Review 1920.

The table on p9 that is cited actually specifies how many death sentences resulted in execution. Guess that bit just got overlooked…

Then there's the fact that the French figures cited are those only from the Courts d'Assize…

Lentz manipulates quite cleverly, seems to be a Boney appologist

Difficult to judge his key assertion without also knowing how many death sentences in France were commuted. Given that he's relying on a British source for French justice statistics, I'm not sure we'll see that information soon.

At any rate, his point is undermined by the selection of years for the data. In 1814-15 the number of prosecutions (and therefore death sentences) in France falls dramatically. This isn't down to a benevolent and enlightened system of justice – it reflects the chaos caused by invasion & restoration, followed by Bonaparte's military coup, followed by second invasion and second restoration. It quite dramatically skews the statistics.

He might have been better off going with 1810-1813 – but I guess Scottish magazines didn't publish data for those years.